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Arrest Made After Death of Woman Who Plummeted From 14th-Floor Balcony

Dave Sanders for The New York TimesCandles were placed on Friday near the spot in the Bronx where a woman fell to her death.

12:18 a.m. | Updated The 911 operator knew immediately that the situation was serious. Whoever phoned for help was silent, but in the background, several female voices were making threats.

“You’re not going to leave here alive; you’re not going to leave here alive,” the operator heard one of them say on Thursday night, according to an account of the call provided by the police.

As many as six threats were heard by the operator, who concluded that the caller was trying to alert the police without tipping off the others.

The operator dispatched a patrol car from the Police Department’s 48th Precinct in the Bronx to the general vicinity, which the authorities had determined by zeroing in on the closest cell tower to the cellphone call’s origin.

It was about 9:30 p.m., and sometime in the next few minutes, Sienna Edwards, 20, who the police now believe had made the 911 call, went off the balcony of a 14th-floor apartment at 750 East 179th Street in the Tremont section and hit the ground, where she died.

“She fell in the spot where I park my car,” said Corey Childs, a resident of the building, who stood outside of it a day later describing the scene.

Near him, on the concrete spot where Ms. Edwards landed, some people had placed candles as a memorial.

For most of the day, detectives were trying to determine if they were faced with a homicide, an accident or a suicide, the police said. But by late Friday, the police said they had arrested Kenya Edmonds, 23, on charges of murder and manslaughter. Ms. Edmonds was described as an occupant of the apartment who had become “involved in a dispute inside of the apartment” with Ms. Edwards.

“This is a complex story,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said earlier in the day.

By early evening, detectives determined that Ms. Edwards had made two phone calls to friends, telling them that she was trying to escape from women who were trying to kill her.

“At this point, the detectives believe she may have fallen trying to get to the next balcony — climbing from one balcony to the next — trying to get away from the women who were threatening to kill her,” said Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman.

The police said Friday night that at present Ms. Edmonds was the only person being charged.

Investigators had questioned three women from the apartment, 14B, after another 911 caller said a woman had suddenly come into the apartment and jumped, the police said.

It is not clear why the women in the apartment were apparently so upset at Ms. Edwards, who went there to deliver birthday gifts to the 3-year-old daughter of her boyfriend’s cousin, the police said, whom she traveled with to the building. Mr. Browne said he did not think the victim had previously met the other women. They included the cousin’s former girlfriend, who is the child’s mother.

Detectives are investigating whether a domestic dispute played a role in the death.

An order of protection prohibited the cousin from having contact with his ex-girlfriend, the police said. As a result, the cousin remained downstairs while Ms. Edwards went up to the apartment.

When Ms. Edwards arrived, she was met by the former girlfriend, the former girlfriend’s sister and a female friend of theirs, the police said. The little girl was in another room.

Trouble started, Mr. Kelly said, soon after Ms. Edwards got into the apartment. She then dialed 911, he said, “looking for help, but in the background there are voices that say, ‘You’re not going to leave here alive.’ ”

It was about 10 p.m. when the second 911 call came in, “from the apartment’s occupant,” he said.

The uniformed officers who were initially dispatched were about a block away when they were directed to the apartment after the second 911 call “reporting the jumper,” Mr. Browne said.

People at the building on Friday said it seemed difficult to imagine someone falling from one of the upper floor’s balconies.

One resident, Cheryl Thomas, said she was lying in bed in her third floor apartment on Thursday night when a loud “boom” caused her heart to race.

“It was so loud, I thought somebody threw a TV out the window,” Ms. Thomas, 64, said as she stood near the parking lot. “It sounded like it hit the hood of a car.”

A man was running around yelling that the woman was his girlfriend, Ms. Thomas said, and a woman was saying that she was a cousin of the victim.

“Then I prayed for her,” Ms. Thomas said. “Such a young girl like that. It’s very tragic. I was shaking.”

On Friday evening, Ms. Edwards’s boyfriend, who identified himself as Timothy Smith, tried to make sense of what happened, saying that whoever was in the apartment probably mistook Ms. Edwards for his cousin’s new girlfriend.

“She was doing a favor bringing a cake for my cousin’s kid,” he said. “She took care of me.”

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